Jerusalem: The Biography

* The Wahabis were the followers of an eighteenth-century fundamentalist Salafi preacher Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab who in 1744 allied himself with the Saudi family. Despite their setback at the hands of Mehmet Ali, the Saudis soon re-established a small state. During the First World War and the 1920s, their chieftain Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud, funded by British subsidies and backed by his fanatical Wahabi army, reconquered Mecca and Arabia. In 1932, he proclaimed himself king of Saudi Arabia, where Wahabi Islam still rules. Ibn Saud fathered at least seventy children and his son Abdullah became king in 2005